The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of October 20, 2026

A horizontally oriented black-and-white photograph depicts a nude baby with medium skin tone sleeping soundly atop a pile of bundled blankets and clothing. Curly hair frames their face, and their feet are tucked beneath them. In the background, two figures sit beneath a large tree beside a wide river. A clothesline hangs to the left, and a plastic bag with Spanish text sits in the foreground among dry grass and debris.

Sleeping by the River, Tecun-Uman Guatemala

2020

Ada Trillo

(Mexican American, b. 1976)
America
digital print
Framed: 54.4 x 79.7 cm (21 7/16 x 31 3/8 in.); Image: 50.8 x 76.2 cm (20 x 30 in.)
Gift of the Artist 2024.24
© Ada Trillo
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

A Mexican-American artist from the border, Ada Trillo spent years traveling with the Migrant Caravans from Honduras to the US-Mexico border, taking photographs of their journey.

Description

In Sleeping by the River, a naked infant sleeps on a pile of clothing on the banks of the Suchiate River, the waterway that forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico. In the shade of a tree, the baby is surrounded by evidence of hundreds of asylum seekers’ journey, with clothing hung up to dry on makeshift clotheslines, while people bathe in the river in the background. While recording the labor and sacrifice of transporting an infant a distance of nearly three thousand miles, the image offers a rare moment of peaceful repose. In humanizing the reality of the migrants’ journey, the photographs provide “a glimpse into the plight of asylum seekers and migrants, hard-working people banded together for a chance at a better life.”
  • 2020–24
    Ada Trillo (the artist) [1976–], given to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    February 26, 2024–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Fellah, Nadiah Rivera, William Griswold, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and Cleveland Museum of Art. Picturing the Border. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2024. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 55-57, no. 15
  • Picturing the Border. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 21, 2024-January 5, 2025).
  • {{cite web|title=Sleeping by the River, Tecun-Uman Guatemala|url=false|author=Ada Trillo|year=2020|access-date=20 October 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2024.24